World News

This summer, acclaimed DJ, producer and Mad Decent Records impresario Diplo, along with partners Andrew Levins and Nina Agzarian, will launch the first in a series of global music projects through a new non-profit music initiative, Heaps Decent. Heaps Decent aims to connect current popular recording artists with students from underprivileged communities around the world and reinforce the positive influence of music education through technical skill development and public performance.

After touring extensively throughout Australia in early 2007, Diplo became interested in what he had heard of indigenous hip-hop coming out of the less familiar regions of the country and it was there that the idea for Heaps Decent was born. With help from Melbourne resident Rosie Dwyer, Diplo traveled to Maningrida (a community in the North) and a juvenile justice center in New South Wales to create the first workshop where students came together to create “Smash A Kangaroo,” the first Heaps Decent release. Heaps Decent has received contributions from Apple, Obey, Serrato/Rane, Ableton, and benefited from an Australian fundraiser coordinated by Evet Jean, dj'ed by Justice and Busy P of Ed Banger fame.

Diplo on Heaps Decent: “This project is way to give back in larger ways and to be proactive and the new faster forms of multimedia and communication are working in our favor to even the field. I feel like any artist with any level of success can find it easy to take some time out and give back to an initiative such as Heaps Decent. I hoped to help to build this initiative in Australia as a test and continue to carry this project to other places here creativity and volunteering can work hand in hand with the next studio to begin in the Rocinha favela in Rio de Janeiro in January 2008, learning from the successes and setbacks from the project in Australia, and setting a precedent to raise awareness of egional music culture in disadvantaged areas and giving new artists that wouldn't usually have the privilege to create the work they dream about.”